22 to minus 3

We woke to a shockingly cold but utterly beautiful sight this morning, a chill minus three outside and thick frost and the low sun. Compared to the days of 22 degrees C that we had last week in Barcelona – yes that was answer number one folks, it was somewhat nippy.

So many pictures as you can imagine. It’s hard going from here to a big city, there’s something everywhere that is so different to my everyday views that I find it hard not to stand and stare agog all the time, I have to be careful not to get myself thumped sometimes. For certain on our list of things to do were visits to Parc Guell and the Sagrada Familia both Gaudi lovers heaven.

The church is a lot further on than it was ten years ago when I last visited but there is still an unending amount of work to do it seems. I’d be almost sad if they did ever finish it because the whole work in progress is fascinating to see, I love seeing the moulds being made and the highly skilled crafts people at work there swinging from windows or measuring precise and accurate angles on giant blocks of stone. It was very busy, so many people walking around just going snap snap snap with their cameras and not appearing to actually look. I tried to draw things but there’s just too much there so many we stood and gawped.

Even the shadow of the unglazed windows on the pillars is great though my pictures do it no justice what so ever.

Ceramics Museum? Of course we went there! Tasty! In a way I thought it was better than the V&A in that each piece had so much more space and you could really look at just one without being distracted too much by it’s neighbours. Some of the pots had mirrors placed so you could see their bottoms, always attractive to a potter. There are plenty more pictures here and I’m sure you’ll see some Spanish influences in the pots to come too.

La Boqueria, the large fruit and veg and fish and cheese and bread and tastynesses of all variety market in the centre of the city is just colour and shape and smell and noise vibrant. You could spend a whole morning wandering around there.

So it’s been back to work properly today, lots still on the list to be done. I’m getting through the orders though. This afternoon though while listening to my BBC Radio 4 dose I heard this great programme, part of a series that I believe runs the whole of the week, “Whatever happened to the teapots?” A whole fifteen minutes about clay and pots, more Radio 4, more! I think you can only listen to it from Britain but I could be wrong there.